Vray animation resolution

[ipxstudios]

I am rendering an animation 720 x 480 for DVD. I am having real difficulty getting a good resolution - the client is telling me it is too blurry. If I render it with more detail it starts to look artificial. I am rendering it in the "medium-animation" setting and have already rendered out a LC and IR map.

I believe the problem is that you can't pack smaller pixels into a frame this size, therefore you can't get good detail until you are rendering out to a larger size frame. Is that what you would do, then resize it in combustion or after effects.

Thanks in advance for some suggestions.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

are you showing him still frames of the animation for approval?

 

...or, how are you showing him the piece for approval? ...some codec blur images more than others. i remember experimenting with an mpeg2 codec for playback off of my harddrive. it was blurry.

[ipxstudios]

I sent a fifteen second animation (individual frames) - which looked fine on my screen but they ran it through after effects to put it together and they said it came out rather blurry. It looked kind of pixelated on my screen too - but I wasn't getting any flickering. Any ideas?

[Chad Warner]

If they put it through after effects, then it sounds like a compression problem on their end, and not a problem with the frames.

[Brian Smith]

It all comes down to image sampling and antialiasing. The only thing you can do to increase the sharpness without increasing side effects like flickering and pixel dancing is to render high and convert down. It's basically like supersampling. If you render twice the resolution and convert down, you will notice a drastic difference in sharpness. The area filter when scaled down might look like almost as sharp the catmull-rom filter.

[Nic H]

Is this something you do in practice Brian?

If I ahve the time next animation im going to try it out.

[ipxstudios]

Brian;

 

Would you increase the frame sizes for the animation then decrease the size to 720 x 480 in post? I thought that might work but then it would increase render times too.

[Brian Smith]

yes i do it all the time...though the output size varies depending on the time and computers we have available. we try to shoot for twice the resolution ie, 1440x972 but really anything higher helps. our video editor scales it down for in final cut though you could quickly and easily do it in video post.

 

Here's an interesting post that talks about it more. rendering high and converting down is something quite a few people do.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/20849-we-ready-hd-animations.html

[ipxstudios]

Fantastic thanks for the tip Brian I'll try it.

[landrvr1]

Wait a sec.

 

If you tested this out on your screen, and the individual frames looked good, than the problem is likely to be your After Effects output settings. Can you post those?

 

Do you use Premiere? There's no reason to export from After Effects if you don't have to...

 

In fact, post an image from the sequence as well. Are you outputing as .tif files?

[windtalk]

I am so confused by this things after I went through all the post about output resolution.

 

I am rendering an animation in vray, it is to be show on TV with a DVD player, should I render it 720X480, or 720X486 ?

and what is the Pixel Aspect? 0.9 or 1 ?

 

some one said the standard DVD resolution is 640x480, then one more choice for the resolution.

 

As my schedule is tight, the less the resolution the faster, so i will prefer 640x480 if it works for burning a DVD.

 

one more question , if I render an 640x480 in VRAY, can i change the ratio to say like 720x480 in AE ?

 

my first animation, can anyone help me on this ?

 

thank you so much

[Chad Warner]

720x480 with a pixel ratio of .9 is the default for a standard definition, non widescreen aspect ratio. Max has built in presets for this, so you can see when you switch between SD and HD presets, the pixel aspect ratio will change. This is normally the best way to start.

 

You wouldn't want to render at 640x480 then resize to 720x480 because you'll lose quality and it will distort the image.

 

If this is going to be played on a flat panel TV, you'll want to think about rendering at a Hi Definition format....which would be 1280x720 for 720p resolution.....we'll sometimes render at 720x405 (half resolution to save time, and technically a standard DVD won't play 1280x720 anyways).

[windtalk]

Thanks for the quick response,Chad

 

As I wouldn't know what kind of TV my client will play, so just to make sure if 720X480 works for every TV ?

 

Do I need to worry about safe frame if this is only for burning a DVD? I know a video broadcast in TV have to think about it.

 

I am not that clear about what you said about HDTV, is it a flat plane TV same as HDTV? Does it have to be render as HDTV(video) preset resolution? What do you mean by " a standard DVD won't play 1280x720 ", if so, what resolution should be for showing the animation on a HD TV using a standard DVD player ?

 

thanks anyone's patience for my silly question.

[Chad Warner]

720x480 will play on all TVs. You will also need to worry about safe frames if it's being played on a regular TV. The image will be cropped.

 

Not all flat panels are HD, but I would think the vast majority are. You can render 720x480 for a flat panel, it's just not going to look as good as if it was a higher resolution.

 

As far as DVD's are concerned, Standard DVDs only play standard resolution (720x480) if you wanted to play 1280x720, you'd need blu-ray.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

you'd need blu-ray.

 

maybe a super cheap HD-DVD.

[rnx]

Wait a sec.

 

If you tested this out on your screen, and the individual frames looked good, than the problem is likely to be your After Effects output settings. Can you post those?

 

Do you use Premiere? There's no reason to export from After Effects if you don't have to...

 

In fact, post an image from the sequence as well. Are you outputing as .tif files?

 

 

 

Hi,

I was wondering why you recommend Premiere. I have no knowledge of premiere, honestly, but i was under the impression that like any other "desktop" video editing program it would use some native codec while importing in tiff sequences or whatever, which of course after effects does not do. While exporting out to any any format AE allows you to set resolution or codec as you wish. Although whether it uses the best available codecs for say Mpeg2 is a different issue altogether. Is this the phase for which you recommend premiere?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

rnx.

[windtalk]

720x480 will play on all TVs. You will also need to worry about safe frames if it's being played on a regular TV. The image will be cropped.

 

Not all flat panels are HD, but I would think the vast majority are. You can render 720x480 for a flat panel, it's just not going to look as good as if it was a higher resolution.

 

As far as DVD's are concerned, Standard DVDs only play standard resolution (720x480) if you wanted to play 1280x720, you'd need blu-ray.

 

thanks. my confuse is why there are a few people here said that they are rendering at 640x480, and it works for DVD.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/21192-animation.html

 

and what kind of software do you guys use for burning a DVD? Are there any free software for this?

[landrvr1]

Hi,

I was wondering why you recommend Premiere. I have no knowledge of premiere, honestly, but i was under the impression that like any other "desktop" video editing program it would use some native codec while importing in tiff sequences or whatever, which of course after effects does not do. While exporting out to any any format AE allows you to set resolution or codec as you wish. Although whether it uses the best available codecs for say Mpeg2 is a different issue altogether. Is this the phase for which you recommend premiere?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

rnx.

 

Greetings. It's really all about what compression, if any, you use at the export phase.

 

As far as recommending Premiere over AE, or any other compositing/editing program, as far as this thread was concerned I was really referring to whether or not it was necessary to export out of AE if you also have Premiere. If you're using both at the same time, there's very little reason why you would export out of AE because you can bring your AE compositions directly into the Premiere timeline.

 

The codecs for both Quicktime and Windows Media Files are basically abbreviated versions of what you get with Quicktime Pro and Windows Media Encoder. The only thing I export out of Premiere are uncompressed avi files for conversion to Windows Media or Quicktime, and mpeg2-DVD for DVDs.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have no knowledge of premiere, honestly, but i was under the impression that like any other "desktop" video editing program it would use some native codec while importing in tiff sequences or whatever, which of course after effects does not do.

 

 

I feel the need to also point out that Premiere is an editing program, and AE is a motion graphics program. I am not syaing that editing in Priemere is perfect, but compared to trying to editing in AE, it is a dream.

[landrvr1]

I feel the need to also point out that Premiere is an editing program, and AE is a motion graphics program. I am not syaing that editing in Priemere is perfect, but compared to trying to editing in AE, it is a dream.

 

LOL, excellent point.

[landrvr1]

thanks. my confuse is why there are a few people here said that they are rendering at 640x480, and it works for DVD.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/21192-animation.html

 

and what kind of software do you guys use for burning a DVD? Are there any free software for this?

 

If you're after widescreen, I would just output your image at 864x480. That's going to give you a nice 16:9 aspect ratio, and you can dump that into your editing software and easily export for either computer or DVD use. High def image size is cool and all, but certainly not necessary for widescreen.

[visions]

@landrvr1

what would the pixel aspect ratio be for 864x480?

 

If you wanted to use a pixel aspect ratio of 1 insted of 0.9 for a 720x480 render...what would the resolution of the image be? if u can explain the formula then i could do the math.

 

Thanks

Vivek

[landrvr1]

@landrvr1

what would the pixel aspect ratio be for 864x480?

 

If you wanted to use a pixel aspect ratio of 1 insted of 0.9 for a 720x480 render...what would the resolution of the image be? if u can explain the formula then i could do the math.

 

Thanks

Vivek

 

For 864x480, I use a pixel aspect ratio of 1.

 

For 720x480, the difference between using 1 and .9 is incredibly small. Test it out and you'll see. For 720x480 (standard, old school 4:3 resolution, hehe), technically the proper pixel aspect ratio should be .9

 

There's so many ways to output stuff for films, and I've pretty much tried them all. Here's some thoughts that might be helpful:

 

1. For both DVD and computer viewing, I output my images out of Max at 864x480. That will give you a 16:9 widescreen image. I find it to be the most flexible way to create widescreen films, as you can dump those images into Premiere and easily output for either computer or DVD use with virtually no fuss. 864x480 is a size that allows for quick frametimes and great quality.

 

2. 864x480 will play and look just fine on a standard DVD player, BlueRay, HD-DVD, etc.

 

3. Unless you are specifically after high definition quality, there's no need to output your images at 1280x720 (or higher). With high def it's important to make an honest judgement call: Does the quality of your VRay scene really warrant a high def solution? That's a hard question to ask, and an even harder one to answer truthfully. My work is way too fast paced, and frankly not good enough, to warrant a high def solution. If my scenes had the amazing beauty of, say, Fran's work (and my schedules were a bit longer) I'd go for it. High def is simply too expensive in terms of time. Also, when you watch HDTV these days, you notice all the bad pimples and warts on the faces of the actors, heh. The same holds true with animations. The entire scene better be perfect, because flaws are going to be amplified many times over.

 

As long as your original VRay images are pretty good, it's going to look friggin amazing at 864x480 on ANY widescreen unit.

 

 

4. I would avoid doing any kind of aspect ratio changing in your video editing software. It's a nightmare. There's lots of posts in which folks are essentially trying to convert their image aspect ratio during post-production utilizing methods that amount to little more than black magic. Can it be done in post-production? Yes. No. Not Really. Creativecow.net is an excellent place to learn more about this and other vid stuff. Most of the guys there will tell you to get your source material to match your output requirements, and avoid aspect ratio fiddle faddle in your post-p software.

 

 

5. Pixel aspect ratio IS something that Premiere handles beautifully. For instance, as I said I like to export at 864x480; with a pixel aspect ratio of 1. That's going to get me a square pixel. Working with those settings gives me the ultimate in flexibility:

 

My Premiere project is set to 864x480 with a Pixel Aspect Ratio set to square (1.0). If I want to export for Quicktime or Windows Media for computer viewing, I'm all set. I really don't have to do anything.

 

If I want to export for DVD, I pick MPEG2-DVD. That's going to give me an output resolution of 720x480. A simple click of the Widescreen 16:9 button in the export settings, and Premiere converts my pixel aspect ratio to 1.2. The logic is simple: 864x480 @ 1.0 pixel aspect is the same as 720x480 @ 1.2 pixel aspect. So, with just a couple of clicks you can output for DVD or computer viewing.

 

Another common way to create widescreen is to output your images in Max at 720x480 with the 1.2 pixel aspect ratio. That works, but let's say you suddenly need to output for computer viewing. PC monitors don't understand 1.2 pixel aspect, and you're forced to try and fiddle faddle in Premiere; which, again, is never a good thing.

 

I'm by no means a video expert. Far from it. This is just the method I use because it's perfect for my workflow needs. The best place to go for more detail is creativecow.net. The mods there are total pros, very cool, and always glad to help.

[rnx]

Hi,

Are you also exporting MPEG2 directly from premiere? How is the quality? Do text edges remain crisp and clear? The reason I ask is because as i have mentioned before, we have not been using premiere, and many of our methods have failed to provide crisp quality.

Thanks,

rnx.

[Devin Johnston]

It all comes down to image sampling and antialiasing. The only thing you can do to increase the sharpness without increasing side effects like flickering and pixel dancing is to render high and convert down. It's basically like supersampling. If you render twice the resolution and convert down, you will notice a drastic difference in sharpness. The area filter when scaled down might look like almost as sharp the catmull-rom filter.

 

Brian, I've been using the catmull-rom filter in my animations and it gives me a very sharp image at 720x480, why would you render at twice the resolution then downsize if the catmull-rom filter will give you the same image at 720x480? Just so you know I've never had any flickering problems using this filter.